Shell Programming and Scripting

position=1
word="command"
#put the following in a loop
#cut -c stands for column
while [ $position -le 8 ]
do
echo `echo $word |cut -c$position`
position=`expr $position + 1`
done

if you are learning bash, you will go here and learn about strings in bash..
eg

Code:

# a="command"
#  echo "length of a is ${#a} "
length of a is 7

to get individual fields, i leave it to you. its all in that document.

Hey ghostdog, many thanks for that - certainly cleared up some loose ends. Yeah I'm fairly new to bash scripting however I've been forced into doing some and although the earlier sections were suprisingly easy, the later have taken a huge leap in difficulty and i find myself getting stuck quite a bit.

Has gotten me a bit worried that even though I'm not going to be utilising bash/shell scripting very often (I've been taught and learn Java & .net mainly) i have to be assessed on it.

I'm sort of working over time here to build as much of a foundation as possible but things look grim.

Thank you very much though, for the guidance - its much appreciated.